Using Empathy Practices in Conservation With Emily Bernhardt of the Woodland Park Zoo

Introduction

In this episode…

In today’s Nonprofit Thrive episode, Ben Freda sits down with Emily Bernhardt, the Empathy Network Specialist at ACE for Wildlife, to discuss the power of empathy in wildlife conservation. She shares research into animal behaviors and emotions, her passion to inspire the next generation of nature enthusiasts and animal lovers, and how she leverages technology to connect networks of conservationists.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:48] How Emily Bernhardt’s childhood interests in science and nature fueled her career in wildlife conservation
• [10:42] Emily talks about studying zoology and animal behavior in college
• [13:37] The impact of human disturbances on hyena behaviors: Emily’s professional path 
• [22:17] Why Emily shifted her career to inform and inspire the next generation of nature enthusiasts 
• [29:58] ACE for Wildlife’s mission to cultivate empathy for wildlife conservation
• [31:37] How empathy practices foster conservation actions
• [37:32] Do wild animals have quirks and emotions?
• [44:26] Leveraging technology to connect a network of conservation professionals

In this episode…

When advancing a cause, mission-driven professionals often believe that arming people with knowledge is enough to drive action. Yet this often has the opposite effect as people become overwhelmed with choices and immense responsibility. How can you motivate the public to advocate for your mission?

Passionate wildlife conservationist Emily Bernhardt champions empathy practices in wildlife conservation efforts. Through a network of empathy drivers, she distills complex and abstract concepts into inspiring and relatable stories about specific animals in zoo enclosures. These stories are integrated with simple, actionable steps zoo guests can take to preserve wildlife. These methods allow people to feel connected to a single animal by tapping into their emotions. Additionally, easily accessible technology platforms and video mediums connect people to the mission and foster further action.

In today’s Nonprofit Thrive episode, Ben Freda sits down with Emily Bernhardt, the Empathy Network Specialist at ACE for Wildlife, to discuss the power of empathy in wildlife conservation. She shares research into animal behaviors and emotions, her passion to inspire the next generation of nature enthusiasts and animal lovers, and how she leverages technology to connect networks of conservationists.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ben Freda on LinkedIn
• BFC Digital
• ACE for Wildlife
• Woodland Park Zoo
• Woodland Park Zoo’s email: empathy@zoo.org
• “Designing Office Spaces That Work for the Post-Covid World With Francis Court of WONDERSPHERE” on Nonprofit Thrive
• “Knowledge Management for Accessibility With Hilary Wartinger of Save the Children” on Nonprofit Thrive

Quotable Moments:

• “Emotions are always going to be a part of anything anybody does because humans are emotional beings.”
• “Each animal is unique; it’s really easy for people to think about that with their pets.”
• “Fostering emotional connections with animals can lead to profound implications for how we perceive and protect the natural world.”
• “It’s hard for people to think about big abstract concepts and then make a change.”
• “Being able to touch or like tactilely and physically be in this space where all these things that you’re learning about are happening makes them so much more exciting and real.”

Action Steps:

1. Incorporate individual animal stories into educational materials to create a more engaging and relatable conservation message: Personalizing the message fosters a deeper connection and sense of responsibility among the audience.
2. Volunteer or visit local wildlife reserves to gain a deeper understanding of hands-on conservation efforts: Engaging directly with wildlife contexts provides valuable insights and inspires proactive protective measures.
3. Leverage social media platforms to spread awareness about unique wildlife facts and conservation needs: Digital outreach can expand the network of conservation advocates and support collaborative initiatives.
4. Consider the impact of human activities on wildlife when planning outdoor recreational activities: Making informed choices about our interaction with nature contributes to the well-being of ecosystems and their inhabitants.
5. Join or support a network dedicated to conservation education to exchange ideas and best practices: Collaborating with fellow conservationists accelerates innovation and strengthens community efforts for wildlife preservation.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by BFC Digital.

At BFC Digital, we help nonprofit organizations thrive on the web so they can improve the world.

Our team of creative and tech experts understands that an online presence can help foundations and organizations accomplish their missions. That’s where we come in. Over the last decade, we’ve advised our clients on web design, front- and back-end development, and tech support.

We’re committed to supporting a select set of clients who continually inspire us with their vision for a better world.

To learn more on how BFC Digital can assist you in realizing your organization’s mission, visit bfcdigital.com, email us at info@bfcdigtal.com, or call 646-450-2236 today!

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:06

Welcome to Nonprofit Thrive, a podcast where we learn from the humans who are helping nonprofits succeed in the digital world. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Ben Freda 0:23

Welcome. I’m Ben Freda, host of the show where we share the stories of leaders in the nonprofit space, the people behind the organizations, the foundations, the programs, the companies that help nonprofits change the world. Past guests we’ve had on the show have included some of our clients, in some cases wonderful people like Hilary Wartinger of Save the Children, who spoke to us about how to run a massive online resource library critical to the effort to reduce infant mortality around the world. She also talked about knowledge management more generally, including accessibility topics in it, which was fascinating. We’ve also speak to sort of experts in certain niches. So last time, last week, actually, we spoke to Francis Court of WonderSphere, which is a great design firm in London, who talked about working for a foundation, doing a web design for them, which ended up, ended up turning into an office design project, sort of a fascinating conversation about ideas for what the heck to do with your office in a post covid world. Before we get to today’s guest, who is someone I’m very excited to talk about, I do have to tell you, this podcast is brought to you by the folks at BFC Digital, where we help nonprofits thrive on the web. If you work at a nonprofit or a foundation or another type of social change organization. I bet you think that dealing with your website is a pain in the butt. Maybe it’s buggy, maybe it’s broken, maybe the web developer you hired a couple years ago is now Mia. But something about it makes you go, Oh my God. We hear that a lot that oh my god, BFC Digital exists to fix all of that at BFC Digital, we help our clients succeed on the web by being the friendly, optimistic nerds you wish you had sitting right next to you. We can help fix your bugs. We can evolve your web presence. We can design new campaign pages for you. We can integrate that new donation system that your fundraiser is so psyched about into the site. In short, we can take it, help you take advantage of the digital space to accomplish your mission, and we can do it without ever asking you to fill out a support ticket, because support tickets are the worst thing in the world. Go to BFCdigital.com to learn more. So today, I’m exceptionally excited to have on the show Emily Bernhardt, who is currently based at the Woodland Park Zoo, a zoo in Seattle, which I’ve been to. It’s beautiful. She is the empathy network specialist for a program called Advancing Conservation through Empathy for Wildlife. It’s a network that’s run out of the zoo there. Her work is motivated by her curiosity to understand different human and nature interactions, and I love this part, her penchant for misunderstood animals outside of work, she is a backpacker. She bakes sourdough, she climbs rocks, throws pottery. We’ve worked together for almost a year, so I know a lot about Emily. I’m really excited to talk to you more and get to know you a little bit better and know what you’re trying to do at ACE. So thanks so much for coming on the show.

Emily Bernhardt 3:23

Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to talk to you.

Ben Freda 3:26

I love I love your background, because you can see it does make it very clear advancing conservation for empathy through empathy for wildlife. And before we get to that, I do just want to do what I usually do on the show, which is sort of understand you and your motivations and how you ended up working at the zoo. So first question, really is, where did you grow up, and what did you want to do when you work it?

Emily Bernhardt 3:48

So I grew up in the Midwest. I’m from Southwest Michigan, from Kalamazoo, and I grew up kind of in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of farm fields, and so I spent a lot of time outside. And both of my parents were scientists, and they were really, really keen on whatever I was interested in. They like supplied me with en masse. So when I was really young, my first like interest that I really latched on to were dinosaurs. I was a dinosaur and volcano kid, and I also, like, had my Disney princess dress on, and that was all I wanted to do. And I was really interested in the carnivores. It’s like, Velociraptor, dinotic t rex, all of the big, kind of iconic carnivores. And I was like, I’m going to be a paleontologist. That is what I’m going to do, yeah, and that was I had documentaries and books, and I didn’t watch Jurassic Park until I was an adult, because that, like, bothered me. I was like, people and dinosaurs, they don’t exist together. That’s not That’s not a thing. Thing,

Ben Freda 5:02

like, you had, like, a factual objection to Jurassic Park. I

Emily Bernhardt 5:04

was like, I cannot, I cannot do this. I didn’t watch it until I was like, 19 or something.

Ben Freda 5:09

It’s a great movie, dude. I really, I love that movie. Yeah, yes, I

Emily Bernhardt 5:14

Yeah. It’s one of my favorites. Now, I was Laura derns character for Halloween a couple years ago. Like, fantastic, but, yeah, I didn’t see it until I was, like, fully out of my my dinosaur face. But yeah,

Ben Freda 5:27

favorite, favorite carnivore. Your favorite dinosaurs are carnivores. Did you have one particular favorite?

Emily Bernhardt 5:31

I really liked the loss of Raptor. I liked all the Raptors specifically. But

Ben Freda 5:37

yeah, and what did you do is that because they were, like, super smart and like, cunning and all that. Yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 5:41

they’re super smart. And I thought it was really neat that these animals that are, like, the size of a chicken really, like, they’re very small, they’re not really large, like, they’re not the Jurassic Park sized velociraptors, right? Were this, like, kind of powerhouse in, I think it was the Cretaceous or the Jurassic. I don’t remember which one they lived in.

Ben Freda 6:02

I know this because my eight year old is went through a crazy dinosaur period. So, yeah, I know so that I think they’re Cretaceous, yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 6:09

yeah. And they’re social. And it was very I think that those interests, like, if I think that on it, like, had a very solid through line into, like, my interests, no

Ben Freda 6:21

joke, Yeah, no kidding, no kidding. So your parents were really supportive of this paleontology idea. Yeah, okay. And what kind of scientists were they? So

Emily Bernhardt 6:29

they’re both microbiologists, so completely, like, separate, and they both work in, like, pharmaceuticals, so, like, could not be more different than what I was interested in, but they were both like, very Oh, we have a kid who’s interested in science, yeah, incredible. That’s incredible.

Ben Freda 6:47

Yeah, that’s super cool. Did you have brothers and sisters, or was it just you? I

Emily Bernhardt 6:51

have one younger sister who is not interested in science.

Ben Freda 6:56

Got you. So you’re the family, so you’re the generation scientist, yeah, right. So you ran paleontology into science. How long did that last? And when did you realize, okay, actually, paleontology is not what I want to do. Because, to be honest, I do read that this is like one of the golden ages of paleontology now, because there’s so many discoveries of new species and stuff. So you could have done it, I would think, but yeah. But anyway, what made you not want to do it or switch?

Emily Bernhardt 7:21

I Yeah, I think ultimately, I think there were two reasons I, like, latched on to something for like three to four years. Was super obsessed with it for three to four years, and then I was okay, I’m done. So I had my dinosaur phase, my volcano phase, but I think that that happened early enough to where the interest in nature and being outside and just like the natural world aspect of it kind of stuck. So yeah, I lived up in rural Michigan, spent a lot of time outside. I was digging in the dirt. Was seeing animals all the time. And I think the main difference there was dinosaurs are dead, I guess, with the exception of birds. But like, the ones that I like, thought were really cool and really interested, and they weren’t here anymore, and I couldn’t tangibly touch them. Like, that’s the same issue that I had with microbiology. It’s too small. I can’t touch it. Whereas with paleontology, I was like, it’s gone. I cannot touch it. So what is still here that mimics, or is very similar to what I found interesting in the dinosaurs and the ecosystems that I was reading about. And it ended up being social carnivores. And so I carried that through line, I think, through all of the My years growing up. And instead of wanting to become a paleontologist and study extinct carnivores, I shifted, and I was like, I want to become a zoologist, and I want to study social African carnivores. Okay, I was specifically interested in African wild dogs initially, because, like Phil Raptor, they’re extremely social. They’re pack hunters. They’re extremely smart. There’s a video clip from, I think it’s the first planet Earth. It’s like, the aerial clip of them hunting and Impala and like, the coordinated,

Ben Freda 9:12

Yes, I remember this for that.

Emily Bernhardt 9:14

And I was like, I want to figure that out. Like, that is so cool. People say that animals aren’t intelligent and that animals don’t have foresight and that they can’t plan, but you’re clearly seeing this play out amongst a group of animals. And I’m like, There’s no way that this is all just like, happenstance and instinct, yeah, yeah. So like, what? What is the driver, and what are the mechanisms behind these really complex behaviors that we see? And that is kind of, yeah, what led me on my career path was that kind of core interest. So

Ben Freda 9:47

How smart are they? Are they communicating when they’re doing these hunting hunts? What are they being creative or what?

Emily Bernhardt 9:53

I don’t know what’s happening during the hunt itself, but there was a study that came out. It was like. In 2016 or 2017 that showed that they will, like, sneeze as a communication kind of behavior to each other, to signal like, Hey, are we ready to roll? Are we doing this? And then I guess, like, I think it’s the number of sneezes that one dog will do and the amount of responses that they get from other dogs that dictate whether or not the pack goes out and hunts, but in terms of, like, what’s happening when they’re all separated and what’s going on. I like, I don’t think anybody knows. No enough, yeah, yeah,

Ben Freda 10:32

totally. That makes sense. That’s funny. So okay, so you were, were you in college doing this? Were you, like, is that where you did you actually study zoology in college? So

Emily Bernhardt 10:42

you did? Yeah, I went to Michigan State University, and I got a degree in zoology.

Ben Freda 10:47

Is that a hard degree? Like, are there a lot of because I hear same thing about, you know, veterinary degrees, or anything with animals. It’s very attractive, like, people really like to do it. Was it, is it hard to get a zoology degree? Or is it not, is it something you can just do if you want to? So

Emily Bernhardt 11:00

that depends on, I think the school you go to, I was extremely picky. There’s like, two big universities in Michigan. There’s Michigan State, and then there’s University of Michigan. And I was really set on having the word zoology written on my certificate, like when I graduated.

Ben Freda 11:19

This is when you were when you were considering schools. You were 17 years old. Yeah, you’re like, I want to have zoology written on my

Emily Bernhardt 11:25

biology will be written underneath my name and a lot of programs. It’s either called Integrative Biology, which is actually what the department I was in changed after my freshman year of college, but I’d already declared my major, so it was zoology was going to be on my certificate.

Ben Freda 11:41

You got that you had it. That’s really funny. That’s great. Nailed it. Nailed

Emily Bernhardt 11:46

And so that was that, like zoology on my degree. And so I think in terms of the content of a program, it doesn’t differ college to college, but it’s what that called. I think zoology programs with the name zoology are harder to come by than they were like, 10 or 15 years ago. I think most of them are Integrative Biology or a straight biology degree with a focus in zoology or something.

Ben Freda 12:11

Yeah, gotcha, but you nailed it. You got that. You got the zoology sweet and Okay, so is that? Is that like, what? What is that like a bunch of different stuff about biology and about the environment and behavioral biology and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So

Emily Bernhardt 12:27

the way that my college had it structured out is there was the large zoology degree program, and then within that degree program you could have a specialty. And so there were, I think, five different tracks that you could go down. One of them was the Zoo and Aquarium track. I didn’t actually do that track at that point. I did not think I was going to end up working in the zoo and aquarium industry, and so instead, I focused my specialties were on ecology and evolution. So that was one of them. And then my other specialty was behavior and neuroscience. So I was really interested in, essentially, how do animals evolve in their environments to behave in such a way that maximizes their reproductive success and their overall survival? And like looking at the mechanisms and the drivers for behavior,

Ben Freda 13:20

which only got up all these things go straight into the empathy topic. But before, and I keep wanting to jump there, but before we do, I just want to get to this point so you graduate. And what’s your first job out of college? Or is it Woodland Park Zoo? I don’t know. And then, how did you end up? How did you end up there?

Emily Bernhardt 13:37

Yeah, my so my first job out of college, I was a research assistant and camp manager for the Michigan State University Mara hyena project. It’s a very long name. When I was like writing my bio for this, I realized that almost all of the titles that I’ve had since graduating excessively long titles, and they don’t have abbreviations, and so I just like, slog through the sentence. Doesn’t

Ben Freda 14:03

that mean? Doesn’t that just mean that you’re really, really important?

Emily Bernhardt 14:06

I hope so. Yeah,

Ben Freda 14:08

I guess so, yeah.

Emily Bernhardt 14:08

Um, but I had volunteered with this lab all through my undergraduate, um, and say, I went to college, and I knew that I wanted to do stuff with African carnivores, with social African carnivores. And there wasn’t anybody at my university who studied African wild dogs, but there was somebody at my university who studied spotted hyenas. And I was like, That’s close enough. I know nothing about hyenas, but I’m going to figure it out. And so I got my foot in the door in the lab, and I worked for a handful of graduate students all through my undergraduate career, studying the influence of human at that time, we called it like human disturbance, because it was very much a like human and nature, they are separate and they should not touch each other. So it was studying human disturbance on the reproductive success of female high. Ninas. And so how many cubs are they producing, and what is their reproductive success? Are they parenting differently based on these different environments that they live in? And so for four years, I worked for various graduate students, kind of doing different aspects of that work. And then that was all in the lab. And then, yeah, my first year after college, I actually went out to the field in Kenya, in the Masai Mara, which is where this field site is, and got to kind of live out my goal of researching African carnivores in the Maasai Mara. And it was absolutely incredible. I loved every minute of it. And hyenas are now arguably, I think, my favorite animal.

Ben Freda 15:42

So when you when you’re doing that, what, where are you actually living like? What are your living and what’s your living environment like it

Emily Bernhardt 15:49

was. I mean, it was glamping like it was. It was roughing it. We were seven hours from Nairobi, and it was like multiple hours on a dirt road, and it was definitely out in the middle of nowhere, but it was, like, those very nice canvas tents. We had meds. I had a, like, desk in my tent that I used as, like my sink. I had like, a bowl full of water. And I was, like, it was very, very nice. We had a shower, like, very nice living accommodations. And, yeah, I was still out in the middle of nowhere, though, um, and you were just kind of remote and separate from a lot of stuff. But was really cool for me is the way that the reserve is set up, is there’s kind of two sides to the the Masai Mara reserve. There’s one side that is managed, um, kind of publicly, and then there’s one side that’s managed privately, and the management differences really impact the ecology of those two areas. And so I was on the disturbed side. Quote on air quotes around disturbed because it’s beside where kind of patrols are a lot less lax on the borders of the reserve. And so the people who live in that area of Kenya. The Maasai are nomadic herders, traditionally, and they would take their cows into graze, and so that was kind of this disturbance that we were looking at their quotes again, around disturbance of what is the impact of these pastoralists bringing their cattle into this protected area, eating the grass that is, in theory, impacting the like prey populations. Hyenas may, in fact, even be preying on the cattle in the reserve. Of course, there’s a human safety element to all of this as well, and, of course, a politics dynamic to this as well. These people were displaced to make this reserve, and so I was on that side of the reserve. So there’s a lot more human wildlife interactions and a lot more human wildlife conflict than on the privately managed side, which was very, quote, unquote pristine. So the grasses were very tall. There were no signs of really human presence anywhere around or even within the reserve. And so we had two camps. The project has two camps, one on this public side of the reserve and one on the private side of this reserve, which is really cool, you get to study kind of two different ecologies and two different systems, how those animals adapt to their environments and all the stimulus and stuff that’s happening around them.

Ben Freda 18:15

So did you come to any conclusions

Emily Bernhardt 18:19

from the like work I did with my project, or with the project, essentially, yes, if you are a mother hyena, regardless of your rank in hyena society, because it’s very similar to the British monarchy, is how I like to say it like and there are low rankers, and you are born into your spot, and you can, you can shake it up if You really want to, but it could be really bad for you and a lot of others around you. And so yeah, it’s very much like your birth order determines your rank in this social group, and that’s the law of the land. And it does get shaken up, but it’s it’s rare, and obviously higher rankers, they have better access to food. They have more social alliances, and so a lot of that does kind of interplay to make them more reproductively successful. So they’re they usually will have more offspring, and their offspring will usually survive to adulthood at a higher rate than hyena on the lower ranking end of the spectrum, those usually have the last access to a kill. They don’t have as much social clout or social structure and support, and so it’s more likely that their offspring may pass away early, that they won’t have enough resources to have offspring as as regular of intervals, because they’re not having as much nutrition. And so if you then throw kind of this human aspect into it, where you have humans interacting with the similar environment and potentially causing stressors on this population, you have that as now, this extra kind of interplay, in addition to this. Social structure. And so whether you were a higher or a low ranking hyena, if you lived on the side of the park that had a lot more human quote, unquote disturbance, human activity, the way that a lot of the moms would parent their cubs is they would just kind of, it was a quantity over quality. So it was, I’m going to have offspring a lot more regularly, and I’m going to parent them for a shorter amount of time, whereas on the quote, unquote, undisturbed side of the reserve, it was more of a quality over quantity. So I’m going to offspring less frequently and really invest my time into this, these one or two cubs that I have, and stay with them for a longer period of time, and then after they’re independent,

Ben Freda 20:50

and that’s, that’s just like, the that’s the best way of, like, dealing with the situation for the highest expected probability outcome, or something. Yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 20:59

I mean essentially, and yeah, this was like, again, a very simple just like looking at the notes, kind of comparing these two populations. And like, how long these moms? I think I looked at like 10 mother offspring pairs on each side, so, like, a relatively small sample size, but yeah, between those mother offspring pairs, I think I did try to have like a split between high, medium and low rank to try and like, see it across all spectrums. And that was generally the trend that was seen is that, yeah, on the more active side of the reserve, in terms of human activity, produce more offspring more regularly, and maybe you’ll still have some that are weaning when you have your next round of offspring. And so there’s, like, this weird sibling competition between these, like, teenagers, quote, unquote, and like these new wars, whereas on the other side, like the cycle has fully completed before the hyenas having her next.

Ben Freda 21:54

Yeah, that is really, really funny. That’s really funny. Just how that, how that, that’s not how I would have thought that it would work out. Yeah, you’re like, Okay, well, I just got to throw more darts at the dartboard. It’s a weird way of thinking about it, but that’s really fascinating. Okay, so you’re, you’re there, you’re in the reserve, you do that, and you’re working on all this stuff for what? How long did you do that?

Emily Bernhardt 22:17

I did so work in the lab. I did that for four years, and that was all during my undergrad, and I did this kind of field work for a year afterwards. So after flash during, I think that year in the field, I was really set on going to graduate school. Right after that, I was really interested in reproductive ecology, and this specifically like reproductive success, what makes you reproductively fit in a challenging environment, and like, looking at the biological systems of that. So like, the thing I didn’t do with the hyenas is that I didn’t look at hormones, I didn’t look at genetics. I didn’t do any of the like, really, like microscope science with that, it was all observational data. And so I was thinking, I’ll go to grad school and I’ll kind of do the more molecular side of this. Kind of get at like, is it stress hormones? Is it gene like, is it epigenetics? What is it um? And I wanted to do that with primates, um, up in Ethiopia. And that was my plan. I was like, I want to do this thing. And I was in the field, and I was like, living my best life. I was having a fantastic time, but I kind of had this realization I’m in this field because I really like nature, I really like animals, and I really like telling people and getting people excited about what I’m excited about, and everybody that I’m interacting with is kind of already there, and they already, Oh, I

Ben Freda 23:47

see, I see what’s going

Emily Bernhardt 23:49

They already know the threat to these animals. They know about the threats to these ecosystems. So I kind of felt like I was in an echo chamber, in a sense, and like I’m not saying anything bad about those people or anything, I just like, I felt like I wasn’t having the impact that I wanted to have. Like, when I was little, I used to put PowerPoints together about animals and, like, show them to my mom, and I was like, her so excited. My mesh, these kind of two interests of mine, and I decided maybe a PhD or graduate school isn’t the way to do that. Maybe the way to do that is to work in science education and in informal education. And I’m sure there are kids out there who are as excited about nature as I was and like, how cool would it be for me to, like, be that teacher for them and, like, have them be able to foster and kind of cultivate this excitement and be like, Hey, you can do this. Like, this is a thing that’s feasible for you to do as an adult. Let’s keep having you excited about this. Yeah. And so I took a job in South Carolina with Clemson University. At some of they used to have these like camps throughout the state where essentially third through fifth graders, as part of their scientific curriculum could come during the school year for like two nights, three days at one of these camps. Essentially do like hit their science curriculum, but in a field setting. And so I was like, I won these camps as a barrier islands, and we learned all about like, evolution and niches and like, where different animals live actually out in nature. And for a lot of these kids, it was the first time that they were experiencing, like, the ecosystems of their own backyards, they, like, hadn’t been to the barrier islands, they hadn’t been in the salt marshes. And there is just something about being able to touch or like tactilely and physically be in this space where all these things that you’re learning about are happening that make them so much more exciting and so much more real. And that, to me, was super exciting. I absolutely loved doing that. And so that has kind of kept me in this informal education sphere, and has now shifted me into zoos. Yeah, that

Ben Freda 26:14

makes total sense. So you go from so you think, all right, I want to be in more of the environment where I’m teaching people. So you’re down there doing that, and then how did you end up in Seattle?

Emily Bernhardt 26:23

I have had this conversation with, like, a lot of people, actually, in the past, like months, about how serendipitous it is that I ended up in this job that I’m in, um, the hyena role was a year after college. My role in South Carolina was, I think, four months. It was not a barrier. It was like a quarter, like a semester, kind of length of time. And I was back home in Michigan trying to figure out, like, what I wanted to do, and I wasn’t sure. I’d only had temporary jobs. I was like 2323 I think I don’t know. I was very young. I was very confused. I had no idea what’s going on, and did not want to be living at home. And all of these, like dealers out for job applications. I just wasn’t hearing back from any of them. Incredibly competitive, and I ended up getting an interview at a zoo in Montana called zoo Montana, and it was for a seasonal educator position, sweet, awesome. That would take me out of here in like, April. It would go through the summer. That gives me six months and then I can figure out what I want to do. I’d been to Montana before. My mom had given me the option if I could have, like, a graduation party after my senior year of high school, or I could go on a trip. And so I chose Yellowstone, because, again, I’m a dinosaur volcano kid, so I wanted to go to the super volcano. I was like, sweet, I’ll go back to Montana. Had the interview, and the interview went super well, and I got an email later that week, and they were like, hey, we’d love to have you as a seasonal also, we have a full time position that just opened up in our education department. Would you actually be interested in that, right? A key piece of this puzzle is, this is February of 2020, and I was sitting at home, and I was like, I just got offered a full time position. Like, I haven’t had a full time position offered to me. I really have no reason to say no. Like, I want to get out of Kalamazoo. I want to stop living at home, and so I decided to take the full time position at Zoo Montana, and I moved out there at the beginning of March of 2020, and I started the day that the US declared an emergency, emergency because the pandemic. And then later that week, they let go all of the people that they had hired for seasonal and dude,

Ben Freda 28:45

but that was not you anymore. You barely, wow, that is very lucky. Yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 28:53

it was through that role at Zoo Montana that I got introduced to the network. Yeah, zoo Montana is one of our partner organizations, and so it really comes down to if I had just made the like, flip side of that decision, yep, I don’t know. I genuinely have no idea what I would be doing, yeah, I know. Yeah. That’s funny. It’s wild. That’s

Ben Freda 29:21

like, fate, yeah, yeah, totally. So you worked there for a while, and then you go to the network. And can we, can you tell me just a little bit? Well, I know, but we can tell the listeners, okay, dear, dearest listeners, can you just tell us a little bit about what the network is, what it’s all about? I know it’s advancing conservations for empathy. And I know about this, but, um, but what it what is the idea behind it? How did that start? And what are you guys trying to do?

Emily Bernhardt 29:48

Yeah, so Woodland Park, zoo, which is based in Seattle, is kind of the hub, or the backbone, for this network of Zoos and Aquariums that are using empathy as a. The interpretive strategy when talking to guests. So think about if you’re a guest going to a zoo and you are talking to a staff member, whether that’s a zookeeper in front of an exhibit, or you’re attending a program in an amphitheater, how is that message being delivered to you? And so all of the zoos and aquariums in this network are working on using empathy, so tapping into people’s emotions and not just the facts, to get them motivated and feel like they have the agency to take conservation action. And so the name of our network is, yeah, the advancing conservation through empathy for wildlife network, which we can shorten to ace for wildlife because it is very long and, yeah, we’re currently 27 zoos and aquariums throughout the United States that are all kind of practicing and trying out these practices that have been established together, instead of 27 zoos and aquariums independently, reinventing the wheel and doing things kind of in their own individual silos, doing this collectively and learning from each other. Because often a struggle that’s happening over at the sewer or aquarium is also happening over at this sewer aquarium, right? It’s going to be a lot easier and probably going to make a better product if you talk to each other about the problem that you’re having, as opposed to trying to fix it within those and so, yeah, basically fostering this kind of mini community within the larger Zoo and Aquarium community around this focus on empathy as a motivator for having a conservation ethos or a conservation mindset you

Ben Freda 31:37

have. And I know there is, because I think I saw this when we were doing the website. But is there like research on how effective empathy practices are versus what the alternatives would be, which, I guess is more factual type practices?

Emily Bernhardt 31:49

Yeah, so we do have a handful of key kind of resources that were developed between like 2015 and 2018 when this work was just starting out, about about what are the interpretive techniques, or the effective empathy practices that will help push a guest or move a guest along this spectrum from maybe not feeling connected to this animal, not really realizing what this animal does in their environment, how this Animal is important, how this animal kind of fits into a larger scheme of things, and how I, as the guest, can help this animal. And so there, there are some key pieces of literature that have both been created by the zoos and aquariums within the network and also scientific researchers who are consultants for the network at that time about, yeah, conservation behaviors and motivators for taking conservation action in zoos and aquariums, specifically that folks within our network have access to cool

Ben Freda 32:50

and so and so, what is the what’s the general feeling like? So, I guess, I guess sometimes I feel like, when I’m thinking about environmental issues or climate change or whatever there it, can get all the bad news and the facts can kind of get overwhelming. So is that kind of one of the things you guys are trying to do with empathy, like, rather than all right? So you’re not talking about the 1000s of pounds of CO two or whatever in the climate example, but you’re, you’re focusing on one animal, right?

Emily Bernhardt 33:16

Yeah. So even, I think, just in science communication, I would argue, as a whole, it’s people have been kind of operating off of this idea that if people just know the facts and they know how bad things are, that that, in and of itself, knowledge is going to be what pushes people into behavior change. And research shows that that’s not always the case. It can be the case for some people, but oftentimes you kind of feel this choice paralysis of like, there’s all of these things that are happening and there’s all of these things that I am contributing to. I don’t even know how I can begin to make a difference. Like, I Oh, I’m overwhelmed. I just, I’m going to check out, and I’m just stepping back, I’m doing nothing, and it becomes really overwhelming and really kind of anxiety inducing, especially when you’re talking about the climate crisis and just this, like very scary idea. And so the kind of foundation of this empathy work is it’s really hard for people to think about big abstract concepts, and then make a change with it. Climate change being a perfect example. It’s really hard to think about conservation on a species level for the average person, especially if you’re not trained in that. So the empathy practices in a zoo aquarium focus that all through one individual animal. So you could go to a zoo or aquarium and you could be learning about, I’m going to use wolves as an example. You could be learning about wolves as a monolith, a monolithic species, and the threats to wolves, and also why wolves are so cool, and why you should do stuff to protect wolves or and I’m going to use an example from zoo Montana, where I used to work. You could. Learn about Simpson. And Simpson is a gray wolf who came to live at Zoo Montana in 2021 and Simpson really likes to do X, Y and Z, and he loves to play with his friend Onyx. And wolves like Simpson and onyx can actually be found right here in our backyards in Montana. And some of the things that we can do to help keep Wolves like Simpson wild are make sure that we’re not feeding wildlife, or that we’re like, keeping a safe distance from wildlife when we’re out in places like Yellowstone National Park. And that’s really important, because wolves are what we call keystone species, and they keep our ecosystems intact, and they make sure that nature is doing what nature needs to do for all of us, whether you’re a wolf or an elk or a human, wow. That

Ben Freda 35:42

is wow. You think you’ve done that before? Like, it’s almost as if you’re told that before, because that was really very smooth and very

Emily Bernhardt 35:49

Yeah. It just like, it takes these big concepts that are really difficult to think about in short intervals, especially like at a zoo aquarium, you have a really short period of time to get your message through to a Christ, yeah. And so if you can get that hook in very quickly, and instead of this is a great Wolf, this is Simpson that tells you that Simpson is an individual, and Simpson has wants and preferences and dislikes and works in the way that you do as well, and it makes this species monolith not actually seem so generic and big, and then takes the issue and kind of, oh, well, I’m going to do this to help Simpson, and I’m going to do this to help wolves like Simpson, instead of wolves like that’s this amorphous other that exists over here that I don’t really know what’s going on with, but I know Simpson, yeah. And so it focuses these actions through this individual that a guest is seeing interacting with, kind of that physical sensation of sharing that space, as opposed to take action, because you know that it’s important. Yeah,

Ben Freda 37:02

yeah, there are 3052 of these gorillas left, and now there’s, you know, or whatever, yeah, like that, right? Sort of, I mean, that’s scary, you know, but, yeah, but I’m not sure what you know, what you can do. So one of the things I like that you just said is the, like, the quirks that animals have, which does actually, now that I think about it like that, is a very because we all have weird quirks that we’re worried about it. Do you animals have quirks too? I suppose I never really thought about that. Yeah, and they do.

Emily Bernhardt 37:32

I think each animal is unique, and it’s really easy for people to think about that with their pets, right? It’s super easy to recognize that if you have two dogs or two cats, that they are completely separate individuals, and this cat is going to behave in this way, and this cat’s going to behave in this way. And maybe, you know, cat a really likes, like your brother and despises you, but Cat B, that’s your cat, and so it’s really easy for you, yeah, to like, think about that with animals, kind of that are in your immediate spaces, and it’s a lot harder for people to do that with wild animals. And so it’s only been very recently as ethology, like the study of animal behavior and cognitive neuroscience and comparative neuroscience, and as those fields have progressed, for people to acknowledge that animals may have just as complex internal lives and personalities as we do, and so that’s been really kind of exciting in this field, because can now speak about animals Having personalities and likes and dislikes and wants and differences amongst individuals, and that’s backed up by neuroscience, by behavioral research, and it’s not anthropomorphizing anymore in the way that it would have been 20 or 30 years ago, which is really exciting.

Ben Freda 38:55

Why did why was that the dominant view that it would it was inappropriate to ascribe emotions to animals, it,

Emily Bernhardt 39:01

I think, for a handful of reasons, you’re kind of classically trained to avoid doing that, to avoid projecting your own perceptions on what the data. And it also may make you, as a scientist, an objective to what you’re studying. So like, the best example of this is like, not giving Animals Names For the longest time. But I think both in zoos and aquariums and in like research, if you were studying animals, they had numbers. It was like, this is specimen age 22351, or whatever, as opposed to, this is Steve, and the like rationale for that was like, Steve giving an animal or something a name, kind of personifies it, whereas giving the animal or something a number objectifies it. And it’s a lot easier to distance yourself from an object than it is a living thing, like when it. Other, yeah, another way to science hard and cold, and

Ben Freda 40:03

makes sense? Because what if Steve was the bully that I had in third grade? Yeah, that is such a dick that Steve, I don’t know if I can say that on podcast, but whatever there. I’m just kidding. His name wasn’t Steve. His name was Matthew. But anyway, so, you know, that makes sense. So they didn’t want to, they didn’t want to, they wanted to maintain objectivity in research and to want to impart their own stuff on the results. That makes sense. All right, so, but now that has changed, that’s changing,

Emily Bernhardt 40:35

all right, it’s changing. And emotions are always going to be a part of anything anybody does, because humans are emotional beings, and you can separate those two. And I think there are definitely places where those emotions in science should remain separate. There are times where it is inappropriate to attribute human emotions or human motivations onto animals, and that’s still totally valid, but we are learning, as more research comes out, that there are a lot more commonalities, both physically like I think we’ve, most of us have come to realize the physical similarities that we may share with other organisms around the world through evolution and phylogeny and family trees. And that’s easily, kind of addressed, but it’s it’s getting at these internal states, things that aren’t as easily seen, that is starting to gain a little bit of traction, and recognizing that thinking about that emotionally may actually get you answering and asking questions that wouldn’t have been asked otherwise,

Ben Freda 41:38

sure. And so, like, like, for example, is this animal feeling jealous, right? You know, like, that kind of thing. Like, I that that happens with dogs, right? Like, I feel like that have the dog,

Emily Bernhardt 41:48

yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you brush that question aside or think that that question is not worth answering, in my opinion, that’s a bit antithetical to the scientific

Ben Freda 42:00

method as a whole, trying to understand better what’s going on.

Emily Bernhardt 42:04

Yeah, right. Maybe, maybe it’s not jealousy, but maybe it’s something else. And you would know that if you didn’t ask that question, and you didn’t try to develop a study that would try and address or answer that hypothesis in a way that’s relevant to that animal’s biology, I think that’s, that’s the key is, like, if you’re asking these questions, you need to be then creating a structure in which the questions are being tested for the way the animal interacts with the world. For a long time, those questions were asked through procedures or tests that would work really well for us. We’ve got hands, and we experience the world in very different ways. And a lot of the animals that animals that were being tested, and so a lot of these animals weren’t passing these cognition tests or these intelligence tests, because they weren’t set up for their biology, and they weren’t set up for the ways that those animals interact with the world. And the second a researcher was like, I think, I think we could change this, because this animal does this and not this, right? Then we kind of opened the floodgates a little bit more, and we’re like, oh, we were really thinking about this and animal animal behavior as a whole through a really narrow lens. And maybe animals are more capable of what we give them credit for.

Ben Freda 43:14

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes total sense. Like, if you’re measuring them by pressing a button, don’t know how to press a button like that. Maybe they’re just it reminds me of that old Onion article on that old satirical newspaper that said, um, study proves babies are stupid, and it was all the stuff that they like. Put it they threw a baby in a in a pool, and it didn’t even try to swim like they put it on an anthill, and it just got stung. It didn’t move stuff like that and like, how dumb babies are. Just funny because I’m like, I just don’t understand the baby’s lie. What a baby can do anyway, right? Yeah, that’s really interesting. So, so tell me, because I this is always what happens on these podcasts, where I go off on tangents and then leave no time to discuss the technical aspects of things. But, but tell it. Tell us, you know, if I just want to cover quickly, like how you do in your particular job. I mean, you’re managing this network. So you are interfacing with a lot of network members. You’re getting resources out there. You’re doing webinars. You have this membership site that people go on. Can you just tell us? I mean, because we have a couple minutes, just tell us some highlights and low lights of that, and include, if you can something about technology. Yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 44:26

I mean, I’ll start with technology, because the fact of the matter is, is we are, technically, we are a global network, but a lot of the people and organizations with Internet work are based in the US. We’re across time zones. We’re across states, and so a lot of what we do is virtual, and we rely really heavily on our website, our discussion board, and platforms like zoom to connect with each other and get stuff done. And so it’s really important for us to have easy to navigate and functioning platforms that allow people to easily connect with each other and find the resources and events and things that they’re looking. Looking for, because without that, the network just doesn’t function in a way that’s beneficial to anybody within the network. And so yeah, technology is literally embedded into the day to day of how this network functions. Can you repeat the first part of your

Ben Freda 45:19

question? Oh, highlights and low lights, things highlight things that are very frustrating versus things that are good.

Emily Bernhardt 45:24

Yeah. Um, I think things that are frustrating. I mean, on it’s the flip side of that technology coin, right? We’re across time zones. We’re across states. It is. There’s a lot of things that are a lot easier and to get done in person. And have those in person conversations with people, and especially in this context, we’re not on grounds at those zoos and aquariums like the majority at the time, right? And so I can only have so much of an understanding of the struggles that people are going through, or even like what their environment is that they’re working in, because I’m not physically there. So it makes doing site visits and things like that incredibly valuable, but that is an inherent challenge of doing the virtual work. However, one of the plus size is is people within the network, and myself included, I know so many incredible people that I’ve met through this network that a lot of them have, like, become pretty close friends, and like, we text each other regularly. And so it’s not only like this professional network that we’ve created, but to some degrees, it is like a personal network, and I know that those people will like, be happy to bounce ideas off me forever. And so it’s really fun to see either those relationships that I have with people develop, or see connections that other people make with each other through the network, personal or professional, and watch those kind of develop over the years, and some of them have spawned really cool projects and really cool professional relationships. And I think that that’s really exciting, because we’re all motivated by the same, if not very similar things, and we’re all just nature nerds who want everybody else to nerd out about nature with us. And it’s really fun to get people

Ben Freda 47:09

talking to each other, it is. And I remember seeing when we’re doing the product, too. I remember seeing people share, I guess the example was signage. Somebody said, Hey, I have these cool signs that we put up in some Zoo. And do you guys want to share, you want the data, and then they could send a PDF of the different signs using empathy practices. Here’s how we how we put empathy practices in the signage. I thought that was like, wow, that’s like, a really concrete way that you guys are sharing information and helping people.

Emily Bernhardt 47:32

And that’s, yeah, a perfect example. Like, I think one zoo, one zoo did a signage project, and it was kind of a big deal. They put the names of the animals on the signs, and all of these like, these likes and these dislikes and like a fun personality quirk or fact about them, which is, like, that’s a big thing to do in a zoo, aquarium, to, like, redo all of your signs and to personalize them to that extent. And that kind of caught on, like, really strongly. And now multiple zoos in the network have cited that initial project as like they did this, and we realized that this is feasible, and this is possible, and it’s not actually as scary as we thought it would be. And we want to do this, and so we’re going to do this. And the outcomes of those, both for staff and just for guests of those projects has been really cool to see as a result of that, like, collaborative nature of the network. Yeah,

Ben Freda 48:25

that’s all you, man, that’s you. That’s you bringing these people together. Listen, I wish we could talk forever, but I just have one last question for you, which is really just, if people want to find out more about you, about the work of the network, etc, where do they go? Yeah,

Emily Bernhardt 48:40

so we have a website that was created by BFC Digital, and it’s, it’s fantastic. I love the website. It is www.aceforwildlife.org and that’ll take you to our homepage, and you can figure out all you need to know about the network. You can also reach out to me or anybody else on the advancing empathy team at Woodland Park, zoo if you want to connect with us directly at empathy@zoo.org That’s our email address, and we’re always happy to talk with you whether or not you’re in the conservation field. I think a lot of the practices that we employ as Zoo and Aquarium professionals are relevant to spheres outside of just Susan aquariums, and can help anybody with anything, a little bit more empathy, conservation.

Ben Freda 49:31

Oh, come on, come on. It is the secret. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really, really appreciate. It’s been great to talk to you. Oh,

Emily Bernhardt 49:40

thank you so much for having me. This was really, really fun, and this was my first podcast ever. So thank you. Congratulations,

Ben Freda 49:46

listeners. Can you believe it? Come on. She’s done many, many podcasts. All right. Thank you again.

Emily Bernhardt 49:52

Thank you.

Outro 49:56

Thanks for listening to the Nonprofit Thrive podcast. We’ll. See you next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.